Corrigendum to: Gunnar Heuser and Sylvia A. Heuser. Functional brain MRI in patients complaining of electrohypersensitivity after long-term exposure to electromagnetic fields. Reviews on Environmental Health 2017. Volume 32, Issue 3, pages 291–299. (DOI 10.1515/reveh-2017-0014):
Since the publication of the article, some questions have been raised regarding the controls in the study. For that the authors give some additional information related to the study:
Figures 1–10: The white areas depicted in our pictures show abnormal brain function. Figure 11 is a control picture. The normal brain shows a significant decrease in the white area, if not absence of white in that area.
About 7 years ago, Medical Imaging assembled a study of a normal population and fused all functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies into one. This has been used as a reference in all fMRI reports. The control group consisted of adults who had no known medical condition or disease, were nonsmokers, had no exposure to toxic chemicals, were not on prescribed or over-the-counter drugs, and were not abusing alcohol or other recreational substances.
Medical Imaging of Southern California has the following comments regarding their controls: “The area color coded in green in Figure 12 outlines normal activity within the default mode network in the control subjects. Particular attention can be paid to the normal activity demonstrated in the medial orbital frontal lobe in controls as opposed to the subjects with pathology.”
If grouped according to age, there is no difference in the control fMRIs. This why all controls were fused into one picture via computer, with green being the color chosen to signify normal healthy brain activity in the control group.
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